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E3: Microsoft Press Conference Instant Reaction

It’s E3 time! Microsoft had the task of kicking things off for us this year so we start with the Big M. Below are my instant reactions as I watched the press conference unfold:

Halo 4

Halo 4 will kick off the show. After ending the show with it last year, MS obviously doesn’t want to make us wait any longer than necessary. But what will end the show? My money’s on a sequel to Blinx.

Live action trailer for Halo 4. Pretty bad-ass. Pretty cheesy. A ship designed to discover new worlds. Looks like something went wrong. Oh, they are crashing on the Chief’s planet. Interesting.

Gameplay! Looks like Halo. The planet is a vibrant green, lots of foliage. Looks cool. Grunts. Covenant. An Elite just disintergrated. Weird. New enemies are attacking. Some new robot thing that reminds me of General Grievous popped out. Cortana says it is Forerunner design.

Some cool ass new weapon is tearing these things up. Daddy like.

Infrared visor! Nice! Metroid Prime meets Halo.

Clips of lots of stuff, like Warthogs, Cortana going batshit and a tagline: An Ancient Evil Awakens.

Sam has some fun toys. Looks like Detective Vision he borrowed from Batman. And slo-mo from Max Payne. I am trolling here, this looks cool.

Now he is climbing up a rock wall. Nice.

Oh, he used Kinect to distract the guards. Uh oh. “Honey, dinner’s ready!” And then you get killed.

Looks like stealth can be done away with and you can kick some ass in a cover based shooter type combat system. Looks fun. Most stealth games hamper your combat. This doesn’t seem to.

Pretty cool trailer. Never played a Splinter Cell game before, but this one has my attention. Co-op. Coming Spring 2013.

FIFA 13 and Madden 13

Andrew Wilson, head of EA Sports is out now. Kinect will make Madden and FIFA.

FIFA 13 is up first. Gameplay. You can substitute, change play and give commands to AI teammates using Kinect voice commands. You can even talk crap to the ref and he will respond. That’s pretty cool. Coming this fall.

Madden 13’s turn. Biggest investment in gameplay in franchise history. Bringing out Joe Montana! I loved his Sportstalk Football on the Genesis. Seems appropriate to bring him out. You can change the direction a play is going to go and hike the ball using your voice. Hot route and audibles can be called using voice. I see a lot of chances for trolling if I am sitting next to a friend on the couch.

Fable: The Journey

New trailer…not sure what this is. Something about magic saving or destroying us. Kinect game. Guy waving his arms around, casting spell. Oh, it’s Fable: The Journey. Guy did a fireball motion and it SHOT A FIREBALL.

Gears of War: Judgement

Phil Spencer here now. Biggest year for games on Xbox. Hyperbole meter is going crazy. Crowd cheers when he mentions 343 Studios. Not sure I understand game journos.

Music time. Xbox Music is a library of over 30 million songs. Coming to Xbox, tablets, PCs and phones. Sizzle reel. Songs anywhere you want, share, personalize playlists and more. Going all out.

Nike Plus Kinect Training

Future of fitness on Kinect: Nike working with MS on Kinect fitness game. Imagine how awesome LeBron would be if he trained using Kinect! Using a metric system to compare yourself to other atheletes around the world. Nike Plus Kinect Training. Honestly, I am trying not to fall asleep here. Your phone will remind you when you need to workout. No, thanks. Siri loves me the way I am. It’s not over yet. This is neat and all, but people who are really serious about fitness probably won’t want this. Besides, why play this when you can be yelling at refs in FIFA 13?

Xbox SmartGlass

Marc Whitten, head of Xbox Live is talking now. Talking about smart phones and how they don’t work together with your other devices. Xbox SmartGlass will make movies more immersive. Um…if I am stopping to check my phone, that’s not going to be the case.

You can send the movie from your tablet to your TV. Then your tablet will give you info about the movie you were watching. Kind of neat.

Phone and tablet can follow what you are watching and give tibits, such as where a scene in Game of Thrones is taking place. I just pay attention to the show, but whatevs.

You can use your tablet to create plays in Madden. That reverse flea flicker you always dreamed of at your fingertips!

Halo 4 again. You find a waypoint in the game and your tablet or phone can give you info on. Other games call this a Codex. Also alerts you when other people want to play. It also allows you to control your dashboard using your phone. Thought Kinect made that obsolete. Getting confused.

Oh, now you can use your phone to control Internet Explorer on the 360. Call me when you get Firefox.

HAHA, he said “Internet Explorer” and the feed went black. It’s back now, but that is clearly a sign.

South Park RPG now. Cartman voiceover talking about how they were betrayed. Jew joke. This is a South Park game for sure. It does look pretty cool, even if I stopped watching South Park in high school. You can create your own character, which is neat. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are out now.

They are trolling MS’s connectivity stuff. Priceless.

Talking about how they had to map out the town for the game. They want to make it feel like an episode of South Park.

Usher came out and is perfoming. That guy can dance, no joke. But he did bring us Bieber, so DAMN YOU!

That went on forever. Way to play to your core audience, MS.

Don Mattrick back again. Wrapping up the presser. Thank God. I need a drink.

Xbox wants to own your life from morning to night. They might even enslave us to have the time in-between.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Black Ops 2 to close the conference. Downtown, L.A. In the future is where the trailer starts. Air Force One shot down by drones. Skynet is attacking! Where’s John Conner?

Vice President is a female. All I can think of is HBO’s “Veep”.

Choppers crashing on the road, skyscrapers collapsing, dogs and cats living together…MASS HYSTERIA!

Hero is operating a Stinger missile turret launcher. Shooting down drones. Because MS is the king of turret segments at E3.

You can choose to snipe enemies or rappel down to the ground. Choices through gameplay! Wow, how innovative. RPGs, pay attention.

Sniping fools using a thermo scope that can see through walls like the Auger from Resistance.

Jumping to a different part of the game now. It’s Call of Duty, that’s for certain. Lots of pointing and shooting. He keeps tapping something on his wrist, not sure what it is doing. Maybe calling out drones to attack enemies, I think.

This is more future-y than Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, though.

Looks like Mason is flying a jet. Ace Combat, your time is up, too, Activision is coming for you.

It’s an escort mission! Canceling my pre-order.

They are not going for a quieter, more personal game, that much is obvious. This is more full of explosions than Modern Warfare. Shame. I liked the spy type stuff in Black Ops. This is more like Obvious Ops.

That’s the end of the demo…and the end of the show. I saw some neat things, but wasn’t blown away by anything, really. A lot to like, little to love, perhaps. Whats your take on it? Hit the comments below!

5 thoughts on “E3: Microsoft Press Conference Instant Reaction”

Man Halo was awesome. So excited they’re going in a totally different direction. Really excited about Splinter Cell, looks great. Tomb Raider is officially on my list now. Smart glass looks very interesting. But that’s about all I got out of it. The new IP’s they announced were all extremely subtle teasers and they looked like XBLA games, so nothing that gets me too excited. And dammit no Alan Wake 2 announcement! I was all excited for the end because I assumed they were holding back for a big announcement, but alas, it was an extremely underwhelming Black Ops 2 demo. All in all there were a few things I’m excited for, but pretty lackluster otherwise. I have a feeling Sony will be the same way, with both of them trying to come up with shit until their console unveils next year.

SmartGlass looks like a good piece of tech but it leaves me wondering if it’s actually going to work. They seem to just want to cock block Apple and Nintendo with it but at the same time they are pushing Kinect like crazy – isn’t the whole point of Kinect to not use a controller? Regardless its nice to have the option, I just hope its supported well.

Tomb Raider has had another very strong showing and once again I really liked what I saw, at this point its made it onto my list. Sadly nothing else shown appealed a great deal, Call of Duty was Call of Duty, I felt a mix of emotions at Halo but the overriding one I think was disappointment at a missed opportunity – I will still be watching it like a hawk though. I was interested to see that People can fly are involved/making the new Gears game… perhaps a refreshing change on the way?

Overall I think MS improved on recent years and to their credit they didn’t jam Kinect down our faces at every available opportunity. Saying that it wasn’t a great showing but the overall score will be settled when Sony and Nintendo bring out their big guns.

That was an okay conference. The games were fine bar Tomb Raider, it looked like a poor mans Uncharted. How ironic…
The filler content (Usher and Kinect-based material) ruined my overall experience though. Not cool Microsoft. Do not show me good games and ruin it with everything else.

SC Blacklist: Really worried about this one. not only is Michael Ironside gone, but they’re regressing further away from the whole idea of stealth. He just fucking kills EVERYBODY. I’m not saying I want another Chaos Theory, but I would like to have the option to be a ghost’s shadow.

FIFA and Madden? Don’t care.

Same with everything up until South Park. Looks really fun.

I dunno. I didn’t like it. My problem with Microsoft’s conference is they did what Nintendo did last year; they focused on the hardware instead of the games. They had to wedge Kinect into the games in the most ridiculous ways. There were a few games here and there, but I don’t care about Kinect. I don’t care about SmartGlass or whatever. Give me games. This is E3, not CES.